Join the Conversation

The week’s odd news: Willie Nelson’s armadillo returned after theft, and more

Times news services
11:14 p.m. CDT April 6, 2014

Get a glimpse of some of the quirkiest happenings in the United States this week.

HENDERSON, Nev. – A stuffed armadillo that serves as an on-stage mascot for country music legend Willie Nelson has been returned after being kidnapped from a Las Vegas-area show.

Officials at the Westin Lake Las Vegas resort say the critter, named Ol’ Dillo, vanished while audience members were greeting Nelson after a March 31 concert.

Westin marketing director Matt Boland says Nelson’s crew called in the middle of the night from the road, asking the resort to scour surveillance footage after the mascot went missing.

Boland says he was outside the hotel the next morning when an apologetic man drove up and handed him a shoebox and instructions to return it to Nelson.

Boland says the armadillo was inside and was sent to the singer in California.

Man wants $140, Maine ATM spits out $37,000

SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine – A malfunctioning ATM at a bank dispensed $37,000 in cash to man who requested $140.

South Portland police said they responded to the TD Bank branch on April 3 after getting a call from a woman who said a man was spending an unusual amount of time at the ATM she was waiting to use. Officers found the man stuffing cash into a shopping bag.

The money was returned to the bank. Bank officials said they don’t want to press charges. But police continue to investigate. The man hasn’t been charged.

A bank official describes the problem as a “code error” and said no customer accounts were affected.

Tree-trimmer goes to hospital with saw in neck

PITTSBURGH – A tree trimmer is recovering after he was rushed to a hospital with a chain saw blade embedded in his neck.

James Valentine was in a tree on March 31 when he was struck in the neck by the saw. Another worker helped him down, and his co-workers left the saw in place to try to limit the bleeding.

Valentine had emergency surgery. Doctors say the saw missed major arteries and, instead, cut into muscle. A hospital released an X-ray April 1 showing the saw still in the 21-year-old’s neck.

Valentine works for a tree removal service. Its owner, Dominic Migliozzi, calls the rescue “amazing.”

Woman gets 20 years for breast-feeding death

SPARTANBURG, S.C. – A judge sentenced a woman to 20 years in prison April 4 for killing her 6-week-old daughter with what prosecutors say was an overdose of morphine delivered through her breast milk.

Stephanie Greene, 39, said nothing as the minimum sentence was handed down. A jury found the former nurse guilty of homicide by child abuse the day before and she could have faced up to life behind bars.

Her lawyer said she will appeal and it’s likely the case will be tied up for years to come. Both the prosecutor and Greene’s lawyer agree no mother has ever been prosecuted in the U.S. for killing her child through a substance transmitted in breast milk.

Greene’s daughter Alexis was born healthy, but was found dead in her parents’ bed just 46 days after she was born in November 2010.

Greene’s fourth pregnancy in 2010 was unplanned, but she and her husband of 10 years joyously accepted the surprise, her lawyer said. She has two children from a previous marriage.

Alexis was born healthy, and her mother chose to breast feed. Forty-six days later, Greene called medics to report her baby was unconscious in her bed. On a recording of the call, she sounds groggy and unfocused. The former nurse first tries to do CPR compressions on the baby’s back and has trouble counting to keep pace. Investigators at the scene found dozens of pill bottles and painkiller patches on her nightstand where the couple’s then 4-year-old son could get to them.

A toxicology report from the baby’s autopsy found a level of morphine in the child’s body that a pathologist testified could have been lethal for an adult, prosecutor Barry Barnette said.

Port cleans up stinking mink carcasses

BROOKINGS, Ore. – A half ton of stinking mink carcasses spilled into the boat basin at the Port of Brookings Harbor on the Southern Oregon Coast.

Port manager Ted Fitzgerald said April 3 they got it all cleaned up, but the smell was so bad it was tough to get near the port for awhile.

Fitzgerald says crab fishermen have their own secret ingredients for bait, and mink carcasses are one of them.

He says one fisherman was taking his leftovers out to sea to dump on April 2 when some of the load spilled in the boat basin, and the port had to clean it up.

A state police spokesman says they are investigating whether any laws were broken.

Beekeeper accused of stealing hives pleads guilty

BELLINGHAM, Wash. – A beekeeper accused of stealing 28 hives from a competitor will have to pay more than $14,000 in restitution.

But, Joseph Eugene “Skip” Guilmette of Everson avoided jail time in a plea agreement last week in Bellingham. He says he pleaded guilty to theft and possessing stolen property to stay out of jail and keep his honey and candle business going.

Guilmette told The Bellingham Herald he took the hives last spring in a disputed business deal, but he is sorry for the theft.

Authorities say Guilmette hauled off seven pallets of hives, bees and honey on his forklift.

Florida clerk who mistook body for mannequin fired

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – A 61-year-old front desk clerk at a Florida apartment complex has been fired after mistaking the body of a tenant for a mannequin and throwing it in a trash bin.

Ronald Benjamin told police he saw the body in the parking lot of the 16-story St. Petersburg apartment building when he walked outside to smoke a cigarette early April 2 and assumed someone put a mannequin there as part of an April Fool’s Day prank, the Tampa Tribune reported.

“He is no longer with us,” said Sheryl Case, the office manager at Peterborough apartments.

Police said the 96-year-old woman hoisted herself over a balcony of her 16th floor apartment. She fell onto the parking lot. Authorities found a suicide note. Her identity hasn’t been released.

When his co-worker arrived around 6 a.m., she told Benjamin she saw a body in the parking lot. But he maintained it was a mannequin. Later, he asked a newspaper carrier and her teenage son to help him put the mannequin in the trash.

Finally a maintenance worker saw the body when he looked in the trash bin around 8 a.m., and authorities were called.

Co-worker Mark Hill told the Tribune that Benjamin thought someone at a nearby bar had played trick on him.

Benjamin had worked at the building for nine years. The building is subsidized and reserved for people 62 and older.

Jimmy Wright, a front desk clerk who works on the weekend shifts, told the Tribune that there’s a system in place for employees to check on residents if they fail on a particular day to dial into a special monitoring system.

“She hasn’t been coming down for the last few weeks,” Wright said. “She didn’t come down to mingle with the residents.”

Bystander helps woman who fell on Chicago tracks

CHICAGO – A man jumped in front of a train in Chicago to help a woman who fell onto subway tracks.

Eddie Palacios says he was hoping the driver would see his bright orange sweatshirt and stop. Palacios was waiting for the Blue Line train April 3 when he heard people yelling that a woman had fallen. He was on his way to work as a checked-baggage supervisor for the Transportation Security Administration at O’Hare International Airport.

After he jumped, Palacios says he was thinking his orange hoodie would be visible and, if not, he could still leap out of the way. The train stopped and bystanders helped the woman.

The TSA calls Palacios a “humble hero.”

Russian envoy urges US officials to ‘do yoga’

MOSCOW – A senior Russian diplomat says U.S. officials should do yoga and watch TV comedy series to ease what he calls their irrational fixation on punishing Russia over Ukraine.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov’s comments to the Interfax news agency April 3 reflected simmering tensions between Moscow and Washington over Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The U.S. and the EU have slapped members of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s entourage with travel bans and asset freezes.

Ryabkov warned that Moscow may take retaliatory steps, but he didn’t elaborate.

Ryabkov said the U.S. got “fixated” on halting cooperation with Russia. He said his “advice to the U.S. partners is to spend more time outdoors, do yoga … and watch TV comedy series” instead of “childish whims, tears and hysterics that won’t help.”

Man does C-section on dead porcupine, saves baby

LISBON, Maine – A Maine man in search of a valuable mineral cut open a dead porcupine on the side of the road and unexpectedly pulled out its baby.

Jared Buzzell, of Lisbon, says he was searching for wild mushrooms March 27 when he saw a porcupine get hit by a car in Minot. Buzzell says he’d heard that a valuable mineral deposit used in Chinese medicine formed in the stomachs of porcupines.

He then cut open the dead porcupine to search for the mineral and instead found the baby.

He tells WMTW-TV he cut the umbilical cord and thought the baby porcupine was dead until he started massaging it and it began breathing.

Dog escapes Texas backyard, somehow gets to Ohio

HAMILTON, Ohio – A small dog that escaped its fenced-in yard in Texas was found outside a southwest Ohio animal shelter, and its owners have no idea how he traveled more than 1,000 miles in a few days.

The 3-year-old Chihuahua-Dachshund mix named Corbin dug a hole under a fence in his backyard in Killeen, Texas, on March 25. He was found Saturday tied to a bench outside the animal shelter in Hamilton, about 30 miles north of Cincinnati.

“It sounds like one of those too-good-to-be-true stories,” Corbin’s owner, Mike Saiz, told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “This isn’t the first time he dug a hole under the fence. One time he was waiting for us on our front porch and the other two times we had to pick him up from the local pound.”

A surveillance camera at the Animal Friends Humane Society in Hamilton recorded a woman leaving Corbin at the shelter late March 29. Staff found him the next day.

Corbin was in good shape, just soaking wet from rain and a little scared, said Kurt Merbs, supervisor of Butler County’s dog warden’s division. Authorities are hoping to identify the woman and see if they can get answers about how Corbin ended up in Ohio and at the shelter, Merbs said April 2.

The staff located Saiz after finding a microchip on him that contained his owners’ information.

“They called my wife and she told me that they found our dog, but she didn’t sound happy about it,” Saiz said. “I asked if he was OK and she told me he was fine. I then asked where the shelter was and she said, ‘Hamilton — not Hamilton, Texas, but Hamilton, Ohio.’ ”

Priest touches off anger after toys remark

WARSAW, Poland – A Roman Catholic priest has touched off a controversy in Poland after news media quoted him describing toys like LEGO’s Monster Fighters as tools of Satan that lead children to the “dark side.”

The Super Express tabloid quoted the Rev. Slawomir Kostrzewa urging parents to dump the LEGO series as well as Mattel’s Monster High. The remarks at a March 30 service in the town of Wolsztyn touched off discussion in predominantly Catholic Poland, which holds priests in high esteem.

Mainstream newspapers seized on the report, as did state radio. Parents took to Twitter to mock Kostrzewa.

At issue are the interlocking block toy’s fantasy figures, such as a vampire baring his teeth. The range includes characters such as The Swamp Creature and The Werewolf.

In remarks April 4, Kostrzewa says the faces of the monsters and zombies are scary and undermine a child’s right to live in harmony and security. Though he denied that he connected the matter to Satan, he underscored that corporations bent on profit do not have the best interests of children in mind.

“Toys are increasingly ugly and aggressive in form,” he said. “Many of them promote negative emotions and the aesthetics of death. In my opinion they have a negative influence on a child’s development.”

He said some parents need guidance on the effect that toys have on their children.

LEGO spokesman Roar Trangbaek insisted the toys were fun and inspiring, while conflict games have been played for generations.

“You can play out various scenarios and various emotions with the different facial expressions the mini figures have: happy, angry, sad,” Trangbaek said. “The beauty of our product is that you can play out whatever you like.”

It is not Kostrzewa’s first crusade. He has in the past campaigned against Sanrio’s Hello Kitty, arguing that it promoted the pornography industry and the sexualizing of young girls.

New York restaurant chain bans Putin

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Mighty Taco, a Buffalo-based chain of Mexican fast-foot restaurants, has banned Russian President Vladimir Putin from all of the company’s 23 locations in western New York.

The company known for its quirky ads announced on social media this week that effective immediately, Putin is banned from Mighty Taco for seizing Crimea from Ukraine. Mighty Taco’s posting says Putin may be ordering around Crimea, but he won’t be ordering a Super Mighty, one of the chain’s most popular menu items.

The posting, which features a red-tinted photo of a gesticulating Putin, says he’ll be “welcomed back” at Mighty Taco when he stops acting like a bully and “picking on people.”

Police: Man arrested for being on field during Pirates’ pierogi race

PITTSBURGH – A man who ran onto the field at PNC Park during the between innings “pierogi race” April 2 has been charged with defiant trespass, and could be banned from attending future games if a judge decides that’s warranted.

Police say Luke Emory Oyler, 29, of Chambersburg ran onto the field, and then among four people in pierogi costumes who race around the field every game to promote a specific brand of the Polish dumplings. This all occurred during the 16-inning, 4-3 victory against the Chicago Cubs. The 5-hours 55-minute game also set a Pirates’ record for the longest game.

Stadium security workers tackled Oyler, and took him to a security office, where he was cited by police.

Probation extended for costumed crime fighter

FLINT, Mich. – A one-time costumed crime fighter who took a step on the wrong side of the law will spend more time on probation.

MLive.com reports that a Genesee County judge on Monday added a year to Adam Besso’s sentence. He now is to stay on probation until Aug. 6, 2015.

Besso, 38, has gone by the nickname “Bee Sting.” He pleaded guilty in 2012 to attempted assault with a weapon following a disturbance at a Flint-area mobile home park.

Terms of his probation prohibit Besso from wearing his costume or going by “Bee Sting.”

He pleaded guilty in February to leaving Michigan without his probation officer’s permission. Besso also was cited for driving illegally and identifying himself online as “Bee Sting,” wearing a mask and a crime-fighting costume.

Jonesboro police seek clothes thief

JONESBORO, Ark. – Police are searching for a man who’s suspected of stealing and selling the clothing of his ex-girlfriend.

The Jonesboro Sun reports that the woman told investigators that her ex-boyfriend stole more than $1,000 of her clothing and that she found the clothes at an up-scale second hand store.

Police say the store’s records show that the man made 20 to 30 visits to the store from Jan. 21 to March 22 and sold clothing that included shirts, pants, boots and dresses worth $1,266 in addition to two pieces of jewelry worth $40.

The names of the man and the woman were not released.

Woman pays $200 bill with coins, town says no more

ERIE, Pa. – A Pennsylvania township is asking residents to keep the change.

Officials in Millcreek Township, along with its water and sewer authorities, have adopted a policy limiting how much change they’ll accept from residents paying sewer bills and other fees.

David Sterrett, executive director of the authorities, tells the Erie Times-News that officials came up with the policy after a woman showed up last month with a shoebox full of nickels, dimes and quarters to pay a $200 sewer bill.

Sterrett says it took four employees an hour to count, sort and put the money into paper sleeves.

The new policy limits residents to using $10 in unrolled coins or $20 in rolled coins when paying bills.